


The Kitchen Mishap

by Coherent_Nonsense



Series: The End [6]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies), Thor - All Media Types
Genre: Childhood, Gen, Kid Fic, Magic, Mischief, Pre-Canon, Pre-Thor (2011)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-10
Updated: 2018-04-10
Packaged: 2019-04-21 07:16:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,040
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14279772
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Coherent_Nonsense/pseuds/Coherent_Nonsense
Summary: Young Loki can't sleep, so he decides to break into the palace kitchens.





	The Kitchen Mishap

He had initially gone down to the kitchens because he was hungry. That was genuinely the only reason. Well, that wasn’t necessarily true – he had to admit that perhaps boredom had also played a part. He had been having trouble sleeping recently, and had run out of places to go. The first two nights he’d gone to Thor, but on the third he had been very abruptly told to go back to sleep, which was fair enough, considering the ungodly hour and the cold midnight breeze. On the fourth night he had walked to his parents’ room, but lost his nerve at the large golden doors, sure that they would simply call a servant to take him back to bed. He wasn’t sure he could deal with that rejection. On the fifth night he had wandered the gardens, but a guard had spotted him and nearly fainted from anxiety. Apparently going outside at night was dangerous. So on the sixth night, growing not only very tired from lack of sleep, and very upset from lack of company, he had opted to venture down to the kitchens.

He knew it would be empty, and probably locked, but also he knew where the head of kitchen staff kept his spare keys. Two corridors away from the kitchens, Loki reached into the pot of a large flowering plant that stood beside a doorway and extracted the keys. There were three of them – one for the main door, one for the pantry, and one for the frozen room. He separated the key that opened the main door and held it ready in his hand as he carried on towards the kitchen entrance. When he reached it, he inserted the key and entered with ease.

Although he was no longer too short to open the door – those had been very inconvenient days – he was still not tall enough to reach most of the kitchen shelves, and the towering structures made him feel very small. He found a switch for the lights and wandered around, not sure what he was looking for. There were cauldrons lined up in the centre of the room, for making soups and stews, and on either side, heating stations and surfaces for chopping and spicing. Built into the far wall were fire ovens, made for spit roasting and grilling. The room was huge. After all, these kitchens prepared feasts for the whole Asgardian court, and often had to prepare enormous volumes of food – all to a very high standard, of course.

It was not this kitchen that interested Loki, however. There was no food in here. What he wanted was the pantry. He made his way to a door on the far left of the kitchen and again opened it with the appropriate key. When he pushed the fairly heavy wooden door open, a huge store of food was spread out before him. Vegetables, spices, cured meats, jars of pickled snacks, breads, wines, barrels of ale, pastries… he had always loved this room, not because he loved food, which he did like, but he wasn’t sure he would call it _love_ – not like Volstagg, who inhaled food at every waking moment. He loved this room because it was so huge and so variant. It was an attack on the senses. So many different smells and colours and textures in the same place, all haphazardly piled up in rows upon rows of towering blocks. It was chaotic – yet it was expertly organised. It wasn’t evident at first glance, but each shelf housed a different item, and each stack of shelves a different type of item. It may have looked like a store of unrelated foodstuffs arranged by a madman, but it was perfectly structured, and the organised chaos captivated him.

He wandered the shelves, enjoying the arrangement as much as looking for something to eat. When he eventually came to the desserts section, he found what he wanted. At the very top of a shelf, far at the back of the pantry, there stood a jar of honey filled with preserved fruit. Very sweet and absolutely delicious, it was every Asgardian child’s favourite treat – he had to have it.

Loki knew already that he wouldn’t be able to reach the jar. The top shelf was probably at double his height, so he searched around for something to stand on. There was a box in the far corner, but when he went to investigate, he discovered it was not sturdy enough to support his weight. There was a collection of ale barrels, which would most definitely be sturdy enough, but he was unable to budge them even slightly from their positions against the wall, heavy as they were. There wasn’t really a whole lot else in the pantry that could be used to increase height. He wondered how the shorter kitchen staff managed – but perhaps there was a system in place that allocated the top shelves to taller workers. In such a wildly illogical, yet impeccably structured place as this, he wouldn’t be surprised.

After a few minutes of contemplation, Loki realised something about shelves: they looked an awful lot like ladders. Excited, he hurried over to the stack of selves and tested the lowest shelf eagerly. It didn’t even bend under his weight – he supposed the heavy jars of food weighed more than him already – and grinned, suppressing a verbal expression of his glee. It wouldn’t do for anyone to hear him in here. Carefully, maintaining a strong grip on the shelves with his hands, he stepped onto the lowest shelf and began to climb.

It was difficult to keep his grip on the shelves, which were smoothly finished and provided no grip, but he managed to reach the very top, and found his eyes level with the jar he coveted. The honey shone under the bright lights, and the fruit leered at him, promising to be delicious if only he could carry it back down with him.

He braced himself against the shelf and removed one hand, reaching for the heavy jar. His fingers crept carefully across the jar’s curved surface, testing every now and then whether they were far enough around to pull it off the shelf and hug it to his chest, when he reached too far. His foot slipped and his one handed-grip failed him. He couldn’t grab the jar as he fell, and watched in horror as his target grew further and further away until the impact with the floor drew his attention to other things.

He had fallen on his back and hit his head, crying out in pain and shock, and while he was still conscious and still able to move, it _hurt_. He saw stars dancing across the edge of his vision as his head exploded with agony, and his back pounded where it had been struck. When he recovered enough to care about his surroundings, he was afraid to move. What if someone had heard his cry? He lay still, staring up at the jar.

That smug little jar, peering down at him – mocking him. How dare it! He didn’t even want the honeyed fruit that much. If he had been really hurt, or if someone came and he got in trouble, it would be _that jar’s_ fault. He was surprised at the rush of hatred that flooded his chest. He saw blue. And the jar shattered.

The jar shattered.

The jar _shattered._

Loki sat bolt upright and whirled around to examine the pantry. Someone was there – a sorcerer, as well! He shouldn’t have come here. The guard had been right; nighttime was dangerous.

SPLAT!

Loki let out a gasp of horror and spun around, two more jars shattering as soon as his eyes lit upon the shelf.

He stared in bafflement at the fruit that had fallen from the top shelf and startled him, and then he stared at the two additional shattered jars. Was that…?

Had he done that?

No, children didn’t have magic.

Still, he focused on another jar and willed it to shatter. Nothing. Growing frustrated, and fearful for the only logical explanation if it were _not_ him breaking the jars, he felt his face heating up, and just as he was about to go and shatter the jar by hand, it exploded.

Either there was a very clever sorcerer stalking him, or he had developed an interesting new ability.

Eager to test it, Loki turned around and focused on one of the ale barrels. Could he break it? This time he tried to get himself into the right mindset from the start, immediately urging himself to get angry. He envisioned himself tossing an axe into the barrel, and this time felt a strange surge of energy before a slit suddenly hacked itself into the barrel and ale began to gurgle out – as though an axe truly had hit it.

Sweet Valhalla, he had magic!

A grin the size of Midgard split his face as he turned to the rest of the pantry. This organised chaos was about to become significantly less organised.

 

***

 

Loki locked the doors behind him as he left the kitchens, wondering whether to return to his room. He wasn’t tired – quite the opposite! – but there wasn’t anywhere really to go. Besides, he was starting to feel a strange tightness in his head, and instinct told him not to try using his newfound magic again tonight. Fortune, however, provided an interesting new distraction.

The young boy was anxious, at first, when he heard the sound of a drunk man’s singing. In his experience, drunk people did things that normal people wouldn’t do, and their unpredictability mixed with their lack of control made them frightening. However, as the man drew nearer, Loki recognised his voice, and a brilliant thought occurred to him.

Volstagg rounded the corner with his stone tankard still swinging on the end of his arm, sloshing ale across the ground. His singing halted slowly as, with confusion, he registered the boy in front of him.

“Loki?” he slurred. “Why are you out of bed?”

“I went for a walk,” he said, and he wasn’t lying. Yet. “Will you take me back to my room?”

“Of course I will!” Volstagg exclaimed, throwing his arms wide. “I will protect you from any wrong-doers who roam these quiet corridors! Fear not, young prince!”

Volstagg looked around awkwardly before clumsily depositing his tankard on a windowsill. He stumbled over to the prince, swaying slightly as he leant down.

“I’m leaving that there because excessive drinking is bad,” he said. “Only rotten good-for-nothings drink, and I am not–.” His speech was interrupted by a mighty hiccup, and Loki tried not to laugh.

“No, Volstagg,” he agreed. “You certainly are not.”

Looking proud of himself, Volstagg patted the boy sloppily on the head.

“Good boy!” he said, and promptly headed off in the wrong direction.

Loki let him go, smirking to himself. Volstagg was so drunk that he didn’t notice that the prince wasn’t following him, and what’s more, he hadn’t noticed as he slipped the kitchen keys into his back pocket.

 

***

 

The next day, Loki heard the head of kitchen staff’s muffled wail as he discovered the disarray of the pantry. The deputy head, who had always hated Volstagg and his insatiable appetite, immediately suspected him, and a quick inspection of his room had brought forth the keys – a sure indication of his guilt. The poor man, too drunk to remember what had happened, could neither confirm nor deny his involvement in the episode, and everyone was so certain of their conclusion that they didn’t bother to notice that the mess had been caused by inexperienced magic.

Similarly, nobody doubted the identity of the culprit when the books in the library were all rearranged, and an old woman with a terrible memory was found, surrounded by misplaced books, in the centre of it all. Or when Swanhild’s collection of expensive and unusual hats was found under Thor’s bed. Or when the ale barrels were all punctured at the feast and a drunken nobleman was found with a knife that perfectly fit the incision.

Nobody doubted the identity of the culprit at all, and yet they were wrong each time.


End file.
